Daily Dose (January 13 – 16)

TUESDAY JANUARY 13 — Mother Pollard was one of the elders of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, during the bus boycott of 1955-56. When her pastor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., suggested she go back to the buses because she was too old to keep walking, she told him, “I’m gonna walk just as long as everybody else walks. I’m gonna walk till it’s over.”
King marveled. “But aren’t your feet tired?” he asked.
“My feet is tired,” she replied. “But my soul is rested.”

So tired is one thing. Being soulless is something else altogether. Mother Pollard knew this. I doubt she went to a workshop to figure it out. She just knew in her bones; that she is whole, and filled with grace and sufficiency.
Which meant that for Mother Pollard, her rested soul allowed her to live fully into this life. (I read that the best beauty product is to actually have a life.)
I love the paradigm shift here. She walked toward, and not away from, life. This life, her life, with its contradictions, frustrations, weariness, tired feet and injustices.
Because Mother Pollard knew who she was. Her strength came from that place. Because she did not see herself as a victim, she could live with intention, beyond circumstance or public opinion. In other words, “tired feet” was not an impediment.
When we know that the light is here, now, we embrace the permission to be present. Where we are grounded, we pause. We say thank you.
We will see beauty in places we didn’t expect, and we are gifted with surprises of grace.
We will see craziness and pain, yes, but now we have the permission to engage, instead of resigning. To care. To spill light. Even in small ways, from our soul flows tenderness, tenacity, compassion, inclusion and sanctuary, joy, passion and justice, mercy and restoration, healing and community. And non-cooperation with evil. “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us.
My soul is rested. Thank you, Mother Pollard.

This week we’re taking to heart the story of the five-year-old boy who lived with no restrictor plate in his soul.
He was awake to Joy, and to tears.
Awake to gladness, and to sorrow.
And he was no longer afraid.
So. Tell me.
Where are you finding replenishment for your heart and spirit?
What enables you, when despair or cynicism take a toll?
Where are you finding (embracing) moments of joy?
Where are you able to spill the light of kindness and compassion?
“My feet is tired, but my soul is rested.”

Let us remember Adam Bucko’s encouragement, “It may not be in our power to determine how things will unfold, but it is in our power to decide how we respond. It is in our power to hold on to the practices that nourish us, inform us, and give us courage.”

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Thank you for your patience, as technology issues still plague us. We moved our website to a new domain, and sadly, it has affected our email. tdh@terryhershey.com is still being adapted and reset, and my deep apologies to all who emailed me, and had it returned. For the next wee bit, please email me at tdhersheyster@gmail.com and I will respond. 

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 14 — Regardless of where you live, we’ve all had our share of extreme weather events these past few months.
And this we know, storms upend days. And lives.
And most storms, in our life and world, are not even weather related, though the effect feels the same. Times when relationships unravel. Health deteriorates. Beliefs crumble. Hope evaporates.
And this much is undeniable: sometime in our life, every single one of us needs a storm-home. A place for sanctuary. A place for restoration. A place for healing.

Which brings me to one of my favorite stories—which I wish had been our go-to textbook for my seminary’s class on pastoral care.
“Today was a Difficult Day,” said Pooh.
There was a pause.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Piglet.
“No,” said Pooh after a bit. “No, I don’t think I do.”
“That’s okay,” said Piglet, and he came and sat beside his friend.
“What are you doing?” asked Pooh.
“Nothing, really,” said Piglet. “Only, I know what Difficult Days are like. I quite often don’t feel like talking about it on my Difficult Days either…
“But goodness,” continued Piglet, “Difficult Days are so much easier when you know you’ve got someone there for you. And I’ll always be here for you, Pooh.”
And as Pooh sat there, working through in his head his Difficult Day, while the solid, reliable Piglet sat next to him quietly, swinging his little legs… he thought that his best friend had never been more right.”
(Thank you A.A. Milne)

Can we stop and embrace this gift? The gift of the power of presence.
Yes, the healing gift of “storm homes.” A place where we need no restrictor plate in our soul.
Storms, mental and emotional, take a toll. And you never know when reaching out makes a difference. A kind gesture or word. A gentle tone. Or just, being there.
And I love Piglet’s skill set necessary for being a “storm home” (safe place) for someone having a “difficult day”: Sitting together, quietly, swinging your legs.
Gratefully, at some time, we come face to face with the reality that no one of us is on this human, or faith journey, alone.
Life is fragile and therefore, we are connected.
This week we will remember that it is in our DNA to be, and to need, storm homes.
To offer storm homes to others.
To ask for a storm home when we struggle.
And we hope for places where healing can begin.

“For spiritually alive people, for people of deep and genuine faith, we don’t want to surrender to despair and cynicism, reactivity and fragmentation. We want to be healed and empowered, so we can participate in healing and empowering other people.” Thank you, Brian McLaren.

THURSDAY JANUARY 15 — ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done… you are fierce with reality.” Florida Scott-Maxwell wrote in ‘The Measure of My Days’.
Florida was 85 when she wrote those words.
Parker Palmer talks about reading them and thinking, “I knew she was speaking directly to me.”
Palmer goes on, “At age 43, I was succeeding and failing as a husband and a father on a daily basis, had done battle with the evils of racism as a community organizer while ignoring the cocoon of white privilege that protected me from them, was alternately laid low and energized by the rejections I received en route to becoming a writer, and had drowned and then surfaced from my first deep-sea dive into clinical depression. I was, in short, a reasonably normal person: a complex and conflicted soul who yearned to be whole. I wanted a life of personal fulfillment that served others well — a life of love of self and others — and I knew that getting there would require me to be ‘fierce with reality.’ But I devoutly wished for an easier path than the one Scott-Maxwell recommends! At age 43, I didn’t have the courage required to ‘truly possess all [I had] been and done.’”
Scott-Maxwell got it right: there are no short cuts to wholeness.
Palmer continues, “The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’ If we can’t embrace the whole of who we are — embrace it with transformative love — we’ll imprison the creative energies hidden in our own shadows and flee from the world’s complex mix of shadow and light.”
We are no longer afraid.
A place where we need no restrictor plate in our soul.
Let us be this alive…

In our minds we say Amen, or “sign me up.” And yet, there’s a gnawing sense that to live fierce with reality, we must get it right, as if some heavenly committee is grading us.
Zen master Suzuki Roshi writes, enlightenment is expressed by being just where you are.
A woman tells Roshi that she finds it difficult to mix Zen practice with the demands of being a full-time mother, employee, friend, volunteer, etc…
“I’m trying to climb this ladder of enlightenment. But for every step upward I slip backward two steps.”
He tells her, “Forget the ladder. When you are awake, everything is already right here on the ground.”
Here’s the deal: Wholeness. Fully-aliveness. Fierce with reality.
These are not prescriptions. These are invitations.
To life… Right here. Right now.
Bringing my whole and awakened heart.

FRIDAY JANUARY 16 — Wholeness. Fully-aliveness. Fierce with reality.
These are not prescriptions. These are invitations.
To life… Right here. Right now.
A place where we need no restrictor plate in our soul.
Let us be this alive…

The garden is my sanctuary, and it helps me understand fully-aliveness when I use gardening language.
In a NYT Magazine article, Umberto Pasti writes about gardens, almost as a perfect reminder to creating sanctuary.
(It’s another way of giving 85-year-old Florida Scott-Maxwell’s summons to truly possess all we’ve been and done. “You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done… you are fierce with reality.”)
Pasti writes, “To rebuild a little chunk of the flowering earth… begin with a light heart and open eyes… to become a gardener means to try, to fail, to stubbornly plug away at something, to endure serious disappointments and small triumphs that encourage you to try and fail again… Look and learn. Begin with honesty.
Your garden, not withstanding all the mistakes you’ll make, will be marvelous… There is no destination end to this. It is a condition, a form of being. Your garden is you, as you make it. No mask, pretense. That is why the errors are important: not only because it is thanks to them that you learn what not to do, but because in them you express something profoundly yours, your identity… Meet the gardener who is within you. Befriend him (or her).”
Here’s the bottom line: I’m not wedded to public opinion or the weight of group pressure (“What will they think?”)

The Hebrew word that we translate as holy in English is, qudosh, (kedusha) is often defined as “set apart” but which would be more accurately translated as life intensity. To be holy in the Hebrew context is to be fully alive, not sedate and restrained. Perhaps this translation misunderstanding has led to the loss of vitality and “life intensity” in the life of faith today. The holy life should be intently dynamic, ever changing, and ever realizing. The concept that holiness is restrained, controlled, has made the holy life unattractive to those in the world who are seeking life at its fullest because all they see is closed and stuffy lives filled with “don’t” and “can’t”, instead of celebrate, and revel.
Live as richly and as passionately as possible… that’s as close to the meaning of holy as you can get.
And to be holy, baltering is recommended. I’m just sayin…
(To balter is to dance without particular skill or grace, but with extreme joy. Often performed by teenagers at parties, but can be enjoyed by a person of any age… say a middle-aged white guy. “Hey, that is some sweet baltering you’re doing!”)
Let’s just say it is all a treat, and besides, why should baltering need a justification?
I want to embrace apaixonante, which is Portuguese for “passion inducing”. It was one of the great words I learned on my Portuguese Camino walk.
Let us be this alive…
Which is another way of being reminded that spirituality means waking up.

So. Tell me.
Where are you finding replenishment for your heart and spirit?
What enables you, when despair or cynicism take a toll?
Where are you finding (embracing) moments of joy?
Where are you able to embrace apaixonante?
Where are you able to spill the light of kindness and compassion?
“My feet is tired, but my soul is rested.”

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” George Santayana​

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Photo… “Hi Terry, Thank you for sending this new temporary email. I had a wee chuckle at the name! Loved your story about the paintings. My daughter Nicola is on the board of a home for abandoned girls in Kathmandu, Nepal and visits twice a year–housewithheart. They absolutely love when they get photos of themselves and a painting takes it to a whole other level. And for the US kids an important experience to expand their horizons and hopefully their compassionate hearts. So many people doing good work in the world–the ‘helpers!'”  Beth Hayward… Thank you Beth… And thank you for your photos, please send them to tdhersheyster@gmail.com
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